Blacksheep Cardigan Welsh Corgis and a steady parade of rescues

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Anyone from the Evil Galaxy around tonight?

I’m pretty sure my username is banned over there now, because I said negative things about the forum on this blog. I know they axed my signature so none of my old posts have any signature info (so I look like a weird fly-by-night poster).

A certain person is looking for a puppy and getting some appalling advice from someone else. If anyone cares to be a voice of reason, she needs to be told that the Labradoodle breeder is horrible. I’ve never found one that’s what I’d call great, but her current prospect is about an eleven on the ten scale of crappy breeders. This is their website. Note how they actually brag about not doing any health testing, and how they refuse to take any dog or puppy back after the first week of life.

If you want to stick your neck out, this person needs to be told that she’s not ready to get a puppy yet. Puppies are not interchageable. If she doesn’t even know what breed(s) would be right for her family, if she has no clue about the fact that a Border Collie is not the same as a Poodle, she’s acting way too fast. She has what breeders often call “puppy fever,” where the only thing that matters is how quickly a dog under three months old can be in your house. You’ll make very, very stupid decisions in the grip of puppy fever, forgetting that this is not something you can afford to do wrong. You pay for fifteen years for your refusal to wait a few weeks or months.

Like this:

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10 thoughts on “Anyone from the Evil Galaxy around tonight?”

… well, or the puppy pays with their life by getting neglected, abused and/or dumped somewhere once the person gets over their puppy fever and realizes their mistake.

I was heartbroken to learn today about a horrible case like that, she eventually found her way to the recue group where we got Ellie from (and this dog could’ve been Ellie’s younger sister) but it was too late at that point and she didn’t survive. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Now to go take a look at the galaxy I followed you from, tho I suspect it’s the other one (the one I refused to visit) that’s banned you.

Oh, and on another subject, did you read that article in The Atlantic, “The Case Against Breastfeeding”? I thought you might have an opinion or two about it 😉

Yes, I read it. It’s sad, honestly, more than anything else. It’s built entirely on the assumption that happiness and fulfillment are solely found in having as little obligation to others as possible. The less you have to think about anyone but yourself, the further you’ve come and the more you are to be admired.

She’s grasping at the Platonic idea of Selfish, the ur-selfish, to parody her term.

The fact that her child prefers her embrace to anyone else’s is twisted until it is not just a millstone around her neck, it’s an Evil. What she advocates is not even free will – it’s the elevation of a choice of self over a choice of other and a denigration of other-focus. The moms who choose to breastfeed are “exposed” as robotic and oppressed, and the only right choice is to break free of that “oppression.”

I think that breast-versus-bottle is a laughably obvious one, and for me it’s much less emotional than it is common-sense. We who are breeders know perfectly well that milk replacer is ALWAYS the second choice. We use it when we must, we’re thankful for it when we must use it. Countless animals go on to thrive without breastmilk, but that doesn’t mean that replacer is nutritionally superior.

Milk replacer for any species is the result of a profit decision, so every manufacturer will meet its required nutritional profile as cheaply as possible. That’s just a fact. It’s foolish to think that any milk replacer is better than it absolutely must be; every company works to place quality one micrometer higher than it will get shut down for. The US government places the bar for formula higher than for most things, so one micrometer higher is still going to grow a baby, but Carnation isn’t any more warm-hearted than Halliburton.

If for some reason you can’t breastfeed or can’t meet your child’s entire demand with breastfeeding, you should use formula, and thank God we’ve got it. If you are educated and aware of the issues and choose formula electively, it’s your decision and thank God we’ve got good formula. But it is just as wrong to canonize self-choice and encourage women to free themselves with formula as it would be for me to separate my bitches from their puppies as soon as they’d whelped, and put them back out in the yard to play because they must be happier that way.

I’ve nursed four babies, and (again, just like the dogs) I get to the point that I “nurse standing up”–quick stop-gaps and I deliberately separate and distract the baby with something else. There’s nothing unnatural about knowing that the baby doesn’t need to nurse for forty minutes anymore and weaning can begin; it’s instinctive. But I do that at eighteen months, not eight days.

But you know, honestly, her article was not about nursing. You could have put in any word, from “holding” to “making dinner” to replace nursing and the article would be the same. It’s about whether we have a duty to throw off our obligation to others in order to be the best women we can be.

And that’s where I get sad. I believe that in choosing to think of others first there’s great beauty and dignity and a far deeper happiness than in thinking only of self. I would much rather be in a marriage where everyone in the family is fighting to do more for each other than fighting to do less. And I believe that even if the people around me are not doing their part, even if I’m the only one thinking of others, that doesn’t remove my duty or my sacred responsibility. It just makes it really important to choose a good husband!

I went and checked, and was happy to find that “our” galaxy is not the evil one — I haven’t been around lately because the lack of success in TTC was making it too difficult to hang out there after dealing with new parents & their babies at work. Hopefully someone else will heed your call at the other place.

Yes, that is a sad little thread.
I couldn’t decide whether to post, or to stop reading and hope that someone else might set her straight. I contented myself with pointing out that she could find SuperDog, the Wonder pet, and it still might bite her kid in the face…. since that is her thing, that her little guy got bitten, and she wants a puppy that won’t bite him, but will guard the house. *eyesroll* But her kids are so young, they don’t know not to provoke, and she doesn’t understand dog behavior, so odds are not in her favor.
What she really needs to do is not get a dog for about 5 years, let her kids grow up a little, and spend those five years reading lots of books, so that she is an informed owner when her family is ready. That is my unvarnished opinion. (Not what I posted, though…..)